Underemployed Engineer

[AKFieldEngineer]

Hello,

Im a long time lurker and I have a question about what to do with my career/how to progress. I graduated in 2013 with a BSME of 3.2 and I am thankfully currently employed. During college I worked on several projects and had an internship but when I graduated I was unable to work for the company that I interned at due to large government budget slashing (it is government funded). I was able to find employment as an assistant project manager in the telecommunications industry and did that for six months until it was announced that the project I was hired on to assist with was not going through. Rather than wait to be unemployed, I talked to the operations manager and left on excellent terms to work for another company on the North Slope as a Field Engineer. I am still currently employed there and while I do enjoy the pay (~$80k) I am pretty annoyed because I am stuck in an office all day (13 - 16hrs) doing the job of an administrative assistant/project manager in front of a screen. I have not left the office once and every approach I have made to do engineering has been shot down. I am considering going back to get my masters degree in mechanical engineering after two years of working and hoping that I will find better placement/relevant work. I am concerned about my long term happiness at this job and that my career as an engineer will suffer due to non-relevant experience. If I go to grad school it may be out of pocket unless I can find a co-op/RA/TA but the school is fairly affordable, so I am hoping work experience with a MSME will be better than a MS with no experience. What do you think? Go back to school, keep working or some combination thereof?

CS

 

[GregLocock]

So your experience after graduating is just these two jobs, one for 6 months and the other for what 18 months? I wouldn't hit the panic button just yet, but if you are working 15 hour days (which is ridiculous if it is continuous) finding another job, this time as an actual engineer, will be hard due to lack of time, but I think that is what you need to do.

I don't know why you haven't managed to get a job as an engineer yet, only you can judge if the masters will help. Depending on which country you are in it probably won't do any harm, but that's not to say it will actually benefit you.






Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[IRstuff]

North Slope is in Alaska, isn't it? You're in a state where 80% of the economy is oil related.

That makes it difficult to find something different where you are.

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

 

[MikeHalloran]

I worked briefly for a large division of a large supplier to the military. They won continuing contracts partly on the basis of 'We have X thousands of engineers ready to work on this contract.'.

Not only were they ready, they would physically fight each other for engineering work.

The awful truth was that 99.9 pct of the work going through the engineering department didn't require the expertise of even a high school graduate, but it took an engineer to recognize which 0.1 pct of the work actually represented an engineering problem, and flag it, so it could be delegated to the interns. ... who all got 'mentored' sixty ways at once.

Your situation may or may not be similar, but consider the possibility, as you mentally step back from day to day concerns and consider, even try to model, how you fit into the company's workflow, and how you might make what you do more interesting, find ways to do it better or faster, or even eliminate the need to do it.





Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[MikeHalloran]

Consider also the possibility that you may be doing the job wrong, or not doing all of it, because no one bothered to train you in any detail or record the exact number and nature of your 'deliverables'.

E.g., if you're supposed to be recording historical data, or making strategic inferences based on the mundane crap that pours onto your desk every day, ... well, it can be pretty embarrassing to learn you're not meeting The Big Boss' expectations when (s)he asks a direct question and you're not prepared with any sort of answer. I have that t-shirt; it's very uncomfortable.

Consider that a challenge, too. If you _are_ doing all that's required, can you do a little more and extract something that's strategically useful from the process? Give it a shot.


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[TheTick]

My brother lives in Alasaka. One thing I noticed in Alaska is that the majority of people I met do not make their living from a single full time job. Everyone hustles. Everyone has multiple irons in the fire.